Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow
Okay, I admit it: I watch “Project Runway.” Religiously. I watch the show’s finale with my wife with the same enthusiasm that I reserve for a Game 7 of the NBA Finals. Since the show’s second season, Alberto-Culver’s Tresemmé hair-care brand had been written into the show. So when I read that executives at Alberto-Culver decided not to stay with “Project Runway” as it struts from Bravo to the Lifetime cable channel, the first thing I thought was, “What in the world were they thinking?” Okay—that was the second thing I thought. The first thing I thought was, “What’s going to happen to the models’ hair?”
Alberto-Culver’s David Kroll, vice president for U.S. marketing, said that the relationship was getting “a little bit stale.” So instead of following “Project Runway”, Alberto-Culver is now all-in on Bravo’s new show, “The Fashion Show.” And all-in for Alberto-Culver is a lot of chips: according to TNS Media Intelligence, the company spent $49.5 million last year to advertise Tresemmé on Bravo and in other major media.
As a “Project Runway” fan, this seems like a risky bet to me. Supposedly, Alberto-Culver had a “fantastic relationship” with the show. If this is true, then I don’t see why it wouldn’t follow “Project Runway” to Lifetime because that’s exactly what the show’s viewers are going to do. Viewers are loyal to the show; the show is the brand, not Bravo.
I watched David Letterman for years on NBC and when he moved to CBS I continued to watch him. Likewise, I’ll watch “Project Runway” on Lifetime. In fact, I’d watch the show even if it moved to Animal Planet.
Admittedly, I am not in Tresemmé’s target audience; I am not a 20-something woman who is into beauty, fashion, and popular culture. I’m a 40-something man who wears a T-shirt, jeans, and a baseball cap on most days. Still, although I’m old enough to be some of the women’s father, I do feel that I speak for them. Let me rephrase that… I feel that I speak for the ones who watch “Project Runway.” Since Alberto-Culver has decided to stick with Bravo, then all I have to say to Tresemmé is, “auf wiedersehen”
Hopefully, the executives over at Alberto-Culver have made a good bet and won’t turn out to be (as they say in poker) donkeys. But if I’m right, they’ll have a lot more than just a bad hair day to worry about.
May 12th, 2009 at 9:11 am
More than a bad bet, it speaks to just how out of touch the execs at Alberto-Culver must be about TV trends. It seems that any time someone hits on a great reality show, someone else (or a network) tries to make a xerox copy, hoping for an equally big or bigger hit. And repeatedly, it fails. Fashion Show is nowhere near the quality of Runway. Ever since Discovery Channel hit it BIG with Mythbusters, they’ve tried Smash Lab, Prototype This, Time Warp…all trying to capture some essence of the original and none have fared anywhere near the popularity of Mythbusters. Food TVs answer to the fantastically popular Dirty Jobs is Will Work for Food….are those crickets? Discovery tried again to match the popularity of Deadliest Catch with Lobstermen…again with the crickets?? And finally, even in the most sordid of reality shows, VH1 has tried and tried to match the inexplicable appeal of Flavor of Love with a whole host of “love” shows to no avail. I think before an advertiser jumps on the bandwagon of the “Next Big Reality Hit” they need to think through the current trends and see that there is no “NEXT big reality hit”. There really is only the original.
October 9th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
We’re delighted by this decision! We are a competitor of Alberto-Culver’s and the more dumb moves like this the better for us.